Putrescine regulating by stress-responsive MAPK cascade contributes to bacterial pathogen defense in Arabidopsis

•Arabidopsis MPK3 and MPK6 are involved in regulating putrescine synthesis.•The expression of ADC2 is induced by bacterial pathogen infection.•The adc2 mutant is more susceptible to pathogen infection than the WT plant.•The disease susceptibility of adc2 mutant is related to suppression of PR-1 gene. Polyamines in plants are involved in various physiological and developmental processes including abiotic and biotic stress responses. We investigated the expression of ADCs, which are key enzymes in putrescine (Put) biosynthesis, and roles of Put involving defense response in Arabidopsis. The increased expression of ADC1 and ADC2, and the induction of Put were detected in GVG-NtMEK2DD transgenic Arabidopsis, whereas, their performance was partially compromised in GVG-NtMEK2DD/mpk3 and GVG-NtMEK2DD/mpk6 mutant following DEX treatment. The expression of ADC2 was highly induced by Pst DC3000 inoculation, while the transcript levels of ADC1 were slightly up-regulated. Compared to the WT plant, Put content in the adc2 knock-out mutant was reduced after Pst DC3000 inoculation, and showed enhanced susceptibility to pathogen infection. The adc2 mutant exhibited reduced expression of PR-1 after bacterial infection and the growth of the pathogen was about 4-fold more than that in the WT plant. Furthermore, the disease susceptibility of the adc2 mutant was recovered by the addition of exogenous Put. Taken together, these results suggest that Arabidopsis MPK3 and MPK6 play a positive role in the regulation of Put biosynthesis, and that Put contributes to bacterial pathogen defense in Arabidopsis.